


The Camp Formerly Known as Goodfriend

by nah_tho



Series: Dumb Interspecies Relations [9]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Camp Goodfriend, Depression, Fantasy Universe Racism, Healthy Polyamory, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Non-explicit Taakitz, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Public Sex, Questionable characterization choices made by the author, Sort Of, The Really Very Unfortunate Reid The Night Staff Gofer, at least in this one, blue taako, criminal misuse of d&d canon, i love these trash boys, mental health, moon elf taako, no regrets, sex after orgasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-13 17:18:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15369459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nah_tho/pseuds/nah_tho
Summary: Taako and Kravitz have a very important conversation about establishing boundaries.Brad and Taako revisit some old stomping grounds.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I T ' S B R A D ' S T I M E T O S H I N E

In the doorway behind him, Kravitz made a sound that translated unambiguously to _this is surprising and a little worrisome_.

Taako looked over his shoulder at him, inquisitive, kicking his skirt away from where it was pooled around his ankles.

Kravitz stooped to pick it up before he answered that unasked question. “I thought it seemed like you were having trouble sitting still at dinner,” he commented, reaching out to gently brush his fingertips over Taako’s hip. “I didn’t realize this was why.”

Taako looked down at the constellation of dark bruises on his hips and shrugged. He knew the ones on his ass were worse. Even when he was standing still he felt them.

Kravitz’ eyebrows were furrowed and his mouth was tight.

“It’s nothing bad, Krav, keep your skin on,” he assured him, running his own fingers over the tender surface of a bruise just inside his left hipbone. “You know his ass would be dust already if it was something fucked up.”

Kravitz didn’t even raise his eyes, just kept scrutinizing the carnage of the afternoon. “Oh, I know,” he said. Taako finally recognized his expression. “Do you want me to see if we have any healing salve or potions left in the storeroom? I’m not sure we remembered to add them to the list last time we were in-”

“He’s not-” Taako interrupted, driven by intense enough annoyance to speak, and then stopped, realizing he wasn’t sure how to say what he wanted to say. “Okay, first off? It’s fine, I’m fine, nobody needs a fucking _heal_ here. You know how easy I bruise, Krav, it looks worse than it is-” It didn’t. It was exactly as bad as it looked, and Kravitz clearly knew this. “And second? Don’t fucking… pin this on Brad.” He knew the ins and outs of operating within a relationship involving more than two players well enough to know that he was going to have a conversation like this one about Brad at some point, but he still resented that it was happening.

“I’m not,” Kravitz said. He looked deeply disapproving.

“Uh, you clearly are,” Taako argued, moving to put his hands on his hips and instantly regretting it when he did. “This isn’t his fault-”

“Oh, I _know_ , Taako,” Kravitz snapped, his face going gaunt for a moment before settling back into fleshed normalcy. “I’ve met a lot of people. I like to think I have… a reasonably good sense of them, most of the time. And I’ve met Brad.”

Taako squinted at him. “Okay? And?”

“And I have met _you_ ,” Kravitz said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Taako, there was never any doubt in my mind that this-” He gestured broadly to Taako’s ass, hips, wrists. “-is the result of _‘Taako Finds A Button And Pushes It Until It Breaks’_.”

“™,” Taako muttered, crossing his arms over his stomach and looking over Kravitz’ shoulder.

Kravitz looked down his nose at him, expression stern. “You know I don’t like interfering in your other relationships, but-”

 “It’s not a,” he protested, and then withered under Kravitz’ stare, “relationship.”

“But we’ve talked about this,” Kravitz continued. “And in this case, you’re not the only person you put at risk when you act like this.”

Taako pursed his lips and said nothing. Even staring at the floor, he could feel the weight of Kravitz’ gaze. He considered how easily they could’ve been curled up in bed already if they weren’t having this conversation.

“I have met Brad,” Kravitz repeated, “and even if I’ve only met him once, I don’t think it’s too much of an assumption to say he seems like a pretty straightforward guy. Most orcs I meet are. A lifespan of less than forty years doesn’t leave you a lot of time to waste pretending you like something you don’t.”

Taako swallowed and swept his hand out in front of him, palm up, in the universal signal of _okay, get on with it_. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

“I know you well enough to know you’ve already noticed this, Taako, but Brad is…” The silence between them hung, pendulous, for a moment. “There’s something _strange_ about him. If you were sleeping with any other orc I’ve met, I wouldn’t worry about this at all, because I have a pretty good idea of how they’re raised to think about things, and I know you.”

Taako said nothing. Kravitz sighed.

“I know you’re doing… what you do when we have these conversations, and you want me to just get it over with so you can pretend it never happened, but I _need_ you to understand something: if there’s only one thing I’ve learned in the centuries I’ve been reaping souls, it’s that orcs are very practical. There’s a reason you almost never see orcish goods for sale, and that’s because, with _very_ few exceptions, they make what they need when they need it, and when it breaks, they either fix it or replace it.” He was quiet for a moment. Taako crossed his arms more tightly and refused to look up. “Honestly, Taako? They may be the easiest species in Faerûn to reap. They never argue or try go to back. They never struggle with the reality of having to leave everything behind. The only trouble I ever have with them is when they can’t accept that their god hasn’t called them to his divine army, and even then, they don’t beg or try to bargain- they just try to fight me because they want to wait for him to come for them, no matter how long that might take. Orcs are not sentimental.”

It was so easy to forget why it was that Kravitz had been chosen by the Raven Queen to become a reaper, because when Kravitz was anything but actively unhappy with him, he was doting and almost infinitely patient, no matter how ridiculously spoilt Taako chose to behave on any given day.

It was too easy to forget that Kravitz did what he did because he possessed both an absolutely uncompromising moral compass and a deep-seated desire for order, and that when Taako stepped beyond the bounds of what Kravitz deemed acceptable, his nature far outweighed his impulse to soothe and flatter Taako’s ego.

“Taako,” Kravitz told him, voice as crisp and void of affection as the day they’d met, “orcs don’t collect things just to have them. They collect them as war trophies, or as offerings to their gods, or because they think they might be useful.”

He knew perfectly well what Kravitz was referring to, but for some reason, he kept picturing a book he’d seen on Brad’s shelf when he’d broken into his quarters: cloth-bound and so small in even his hands that he hadn’t been able to picture it in Brad’s.

“They way he moves, the way he touches things- it’s not an affectation, Taako. I’ve never seen an orc not only so preoccupied with not breaking anything, but so _good_ at it. That’s not something you accomplish just by worrying about making a good impression, because worry makes you _careful_ , not graceful. A person his size only ever achieves that level of delicacy by consistently being very aware of and very concerned by the possibility that they might break something.” He sounded frustrated. “Taako, look at me.”

He raised his eyes very reluctantly.

Kravitz’ unpitying stare didn’t falter. “If you push him and he actually hurts you, it’s not you I’m going to worry about,” he said. “From what little I know of him, I feel like he’s the sort of person who would take accidentally hurting you a lot harder than you’d take getting hurt by him, and while it’d be a huge relief to find out that’s not true, I’d rather not risk finding out it is.”

“I get it,” Taako muttered. “I get it, okay?”

Kravitz frowned. “Do you? Do you, Taako?” His voice was clipped. Taako could tell he was struggling. “Every other time we’ve had this conversation, you say that. You do this. I’ve let it go it because, under those circumstances, my concern was about your habit of getting involved with people who genuinely _do_ seem to want to hurt you. I don’t like the idea of your dating history accumulating a body count, but I also don’t want to see you throw away the first relationship you’ve found that actually seems to be good for you-”

“We’re not,” Taako protested, “in a _relationship_.” His skin felt itchy. He resented the fact that his nakedness didn’t seem to matter either way. He wanted to be anywhere else.

“Do you like him?”

Taako opened his mouth. Closed it. “He’s fine, I guess.”

Kravitz looked at him. “Just fine? Then it won’t bother you if I ask you to stop seeing him, since you’re not very invested.”

He bristled. “ _Seriously_? This is how you’re going to-”

“Do you,” Kravitz asked him again, “or do you not like him?”

“He’s-”

“One or the other, Taako,” Kravitz said sharply.

He hesitated, not because he didn’t know, but because admitting it felt like backing himself into a corner. “Yeah. Yeah, I like him,” he muttered. “So?”

Kravitz kept looking at him. “Taako, you’ve met his family.”

Taako started to argue, thought about it, and then blanched. “I’ve met his _family_ ,” he croaked.

“And he’s met yours,” Kravitz told him. He sounded, to Taako’s ears, like a judge handing down a sentence. “I don’t care if you don’t want to admit it, Taako,” Kravitz said, “and I don’t care how indulgent he’s been about the fact that you don’t. It’s very clear what’s happening here- if you don’t want to be in a relationship with him, you know exactly how to make sure that isn’t the case. Otherwise, you are, and you need to stop acting like your actions don’t have consequences. Don’t be _cruel_.” Emotion crept into Kravitz’ tone. It pierced through him in a way he hadn’t anticipated.

Taako threw up his hands in a gesture even he couldn’t parse, and then buried them in his hair. “Krav-” he started, and then stopped.

Kravitz waited.

Taako swallowed and looked away.

“I know you,” Kravitz said, like a quiet indictment, “and last-minute conversations in the middle of sex might be fine for some things, but not for things that leave marks like those. Without time and space to decide how they feel about something like this, people make decisions they’re not always happy with. Does he _like_ leaving bruises on you?”

One of the mixed blessings of a long life was a similarly long memory: unbidden, Taako’s mind summoned up an image of Brad’s expression when he’d realized he’d left bruises on his ass the night they’d slept together after dinner with Lup and Barry. He could almost feel the light touch of his fingers, moving over his skin like he hoped the bruising would rub off like so much dirt.

Bruises much less severe than the ones peppering him now.

“It wasn’t a rhetorical question, Taako,” Kravitz told him.

“…No,” Taako admitted. “I mean, I don’t think so? I never asked.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Kravitz sighed. “I don’t like meddling in what you do. I don’t want to have to worry about this. But I like Brad, Taako, and I don’t think you’re doing anyone any favours by pretending you don’t. It doesn’t matter how patient he’s been with you, and I don’t care if he’s been fine with everything up until now: if you keep treating him like this, there will come a point where you’re taking advantage of how much he _clearly_ likes you.”

“I- you’re making some pretty wild-” Taako started to object.

“I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you actually believe that he’s put up with everything you’ve done to him just because the sex was good,” Kravitz told him, flinched at his own words, and then sighed again, taking Taako’s face in his hands. A little of his usual sentimentality flickered through his stern expression. “I love you, Taako. I adore you. I’m… crazy about you in a way that might mean I’m actually crazy. You’re complicated and demanding. You’re unpredictable and stubborn and sometimes you panic and you say terrible things, and… I love you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with myself sometimes.” Taako reached up to cup Kravitz’ hands, slow and still a little sullen. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve fooled myself into believing you’re perfect. _We_ weren’t perfect. We’ve worked hard together and we’ve made this work, and it’s great, and there hasn’t been a single moment where I’ve regretted falling in love with you. And that’s why _this_ makes me so unhappy. I know you can do better. I haven’t seen you this excited about someone since we started dating.” His expression hadn’t quite given up on severity, but his dark, beautiful eyes were worried. “I don’t want you to ruin this for yourself.”

The odd bubble of anxiety in Taako that was always floating somewhere just below his ribcage didn’t quite pop, but it certainly felt punctured.

“I don’t _want_ to ruin it. I’m just _gonna_ ,” he blurted out, and then clammed up.

“You have to talk to him,” Kravitz said gently. “He needs to understand that you want to make this work.”

The breach in Taako’s pearl-like carapace around his anxieties shrieked. “And what? Have him turn around and tell me I’ve been taking this whole thing too seriously? Fuck _no_ ,” he argued.

Kravitz’ hands were gradually warming with contact, but they were still cool. “Do you trust him?”

Whatever vitriol had been culturing on Taako’s tongue dried up and died. He swallowed against nothing. “Yeah. I mean, as much cha boy trusts anyone anymore,” he joked.

Kravitz stroked his cheek. “I know it’s scary, babe. I won’t push you, but let me be clear: you can’t expect him to read your mind. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like he just sort of… rolls with your punches. You can’t let him keep doing that forever if you want this to go anywhere. You can do better than this. You’re capable of better than this, Taako.”

He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, chewed his words, and sighed heavily through his nose. “I’ll think about it,” he said reluctantly, and Kravitz kissed his forehead.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

***

It wasn’t a lazy morning, unfortunately: even if Kravitz didn’t have to work, there were errands to be run. The market was too quiet for anyone to be paying much attention to him. Even the vendors looked disinterested in his presence.

“Remind me why we need salve?” he complained, and Kravitz hummed.

“It’s good to have,” he said, which Taako knew translated to a politer version of _even if you don’t want it now, I’m sure you’ll want it later_.

“And we don’t need basil, I have like eight leaves left,” Taako argued.

“We ran out last time you made risotto, babe,” Kravitz told him, which translated to both _you transmuted them into bay leaves_ and _thank you for reminding me we also need bay leaves_ simultaneously.

“And about those chives-”

***

It was a warm, lazy afternoon, which was nice. He lay with his head in Kravitz’ lap, enjoying the fingers in his hair and the soothing background noise of Kravitz murmuring to himself or turning another page in his book.

They only rarely went on dates, these days: they’d settled into that sweet place of domestic comfort that often made it seem like more trouble than it was worth to go to the effort of actually planning and going out on dates.

“Hey, Krav,” Taako said, reaching up to touch his face.

“Yes?”

“Wanna go to that expo in Rockport? Magnus says it’s worth it,” he commented.

Kravitz finally dropped his eyes from his book and gave him a long, neutral look. “I’d love to,” he said, “but are you sure there wasn’t something else you needed to do first?”

For a split-second, Taako had no idea what he was referring to, and then he did.

He groaned.

***

Two weeks.

Two weeks of quiet expectations, of deflected plans, of meaningful looks every time Brad came up in conversation.

He knew Kravitz didn’t intend to loom. He knew he wasn’t trying to be a judgemental presence in Taako’s life.

He knew he was inventing the monstrous Kravitz he was seeing, was making him far more sinister and villainous than he was actually being. He knew he wasn’t being fair. The only thing Kravitz was doing was caring, and making it known that he cared. He still felt angry and trapped and frustrated.

It was a Tuesday afternoon.

“I want to do better.” It was quiet, and petulant, and sounded stupid, and he felt stupid saying it.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure Kravitz had heard him. He was furious. Saying it had taken years off his life.

Then Kravitz turned to him, expression blankly inquisitive at first but slowly changing as he registered what Taako had said. “What?”

Taako turned away, lips tight.

Kravitz kissed the top of his head.

***

He knew Brad could tell something was wrong with him. No matter how well he deflected or what jokes he made, he could see in his eyes that he’d noticed something was amiss.

Not for the first time, but for the first time with any seriousness, he hated him for his perceptive nature.

“Do you-” Brad started to ask again.

“No,” he snapped, then caught himself, and threw himself down on Brad’s chest with more force than was strictly necessary. “Hey. Let’s do something, my guy. And I don’t mean ‘let’s fuck’, I mean let’s fucking _do_ something. You got plans?”

Brad looked surprised and a little gratified. “Well, not right this second, but next week-”

“Cool, sure,” Taako said, patting his chest, “Taako’s in. What’re we doing?”

***

This was a mistake.

He’d made a mistake.

The air was dancing with the sunlight, bending beams of it in the wet heat and making the horizon shimmer.

He remembered the Trollbarg Forest. It was here, at the Bureau of Balance’s horseshit team building retreat, that he’d first met Brad, or at least, that he first remembered meeting Brad- it was perfectly possible they’d crossed paths before and he’d never cared enough to notice. Whatever the truth was, his memory of it had the gauzy quality of disinterest, but he remembered enough to know that whatever this was, it certainly wasn’t the paper-plates-and-picnic-tables Camp Goodfriend he had expected.

Gone were the ugly but functional bunk-bed barracks they’d slept in: someone had built quaint little stone cabins in a neat row all along the treeline. Gone were the picnic tables, replaced by long, pale-coloured mess tents. Gone were the plywood dungeon, the buffet-style cafeteria station, and the makeshift stage where they’d run a few too many workshops and seminars for him to get away with skipping. The only thing they hadn’t changed was the stone firepit, and the grass around it was too green to be anything but magical.

There was money here, he realized. This wasn’t for the Bureau’s staff- this was something for the Bureau’s donors. Something to pet and flatter them, to butter them up and keep their purses open.

He was a deft hand at lightening people’s pockets, to be sure, but grifting didn’t lend itself well to a structure that relied on consistent and ongoing donations.

Which meant he was going to have to Play Nice.

He’d made a terrible mistake.

***

Where once there was a long expanse of open grass where they’d all been forced to participate in three-legged races and other such teamwork building exercises, and where Magnus had once practiced his Fantasy Skeet Shooting, there was now a row of wooden market stalls. Tucked away particularly inconspicuously in the shadow of the campground’s administrative building was one that contained Brad Bradson.

“What the fuck is this?” Taako asked without preamble, and Brad looked up from whatever it was he was doing crouched down behind the counter.

Instead of an answer, what Taako received was a startled squint followed by a much too delighted-sounding, “you came!”

He huffed, trying to blow his hair out of his face, and crossed his arms over his chest. “If cha boy says he’s coming, he’s gonna come,” he said airily, flapping a hand in annoyance. “Pun _fully_ intended,” he added, ignoring the way the half-elf in the next booth over sputtered before pretending she hadn’t been listening in. “I repeat: what the fuck is this, Bradson?”

Brad was beaming. “The Director gave staff an opportunity to vend merchandise or run carnival games to help offset the cost of the event, and well, since I brew my own beer, I volunteered to-”

“Wait,” Taako interrupted, incredulous. “Are you fucking _serious_? You’re selling the shit you make so Lucretia can recoup on expenses, my dude? This is bullshit. _I’m_ the one who cons people here, not her. Where is she? She’s stepping on my brand-”

Brad raised both hands in an odd, defensive posture. “It’s not-” he started, and then grimaced. “She… it’s also an opportunity to make money, but I was going to donate-”

“No,” Taako told him, pointing a blue finger at him menacingly.

“But-”

“No!” he repeated, snarling. “I swear to Istus, Bradson, if you try that shit I will transmute every pair of underwear you own into cured ham-”

“I don’t _need_ to make money on this, it’s a hobby, Taako,” Brad argued, wincing as he rose out of his crouch. “I’m just happy to be able to share-”

Whatever it was he was saying, Taako missed it, because as he stood up, it became obvious that the stall was much too small for him: at his full height, his head was nearly brushing the ceiling of it. He started hunching over to compensate, and as he did, one of his elbows collided with the surface of the counter and he stifled what sounded like it might’ve been a curse.

Taako stared.

“Uhh,” he said numbly, not sure if he wanted to laugh. “Huh. We seem to have bigger problems here, my man: how exactly are you expecting to do anything in there? There’s barely room for _you_.”

Brad shot him a pained, distracted smile, clearly preoccupied with getting his bearings in the confined space. “I can fit a till under the counter, and there’s enough space to either side to-”

Taako raised his palms in the universal sign of _what the fuck, stop_. “Uh, yeah, okay, okay, sure- _or_ I could just do that and everything would be cool. I’m like… half your size, my guy?” he pointed out. “Anyway, let me do the stall thing and you can… I don’t know, do whatever you wanted me to do-”

Brad was giving him a weird, unhappy look.

“What?”

“I didn’t invite you here to make you _work_ , Taako,” Brad told him quietly. Taako refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t invited him at all; it didn’t seem like an appropriate moment to remind Brad that he’d essentially invited himself along for the ride. “Besides, it’s too bright out there for me.” He shrugged. In the confines of the stall, it was one of the few gestures he could manage without risking a collision. “I can stay up a whole day now and then, if I have to, but I still can’t _see_ , especially not when the weather’s like this.” He gestured delicately upwards, taking obvious care to keep his motions small and neat. “It’s not even noon yet and I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to the cabins on my own right now,” he admitted. “I could barely see you until you came out of the light.”

Taako looked up at the cloudless blue sky, frowning. He’d started sweating on the walk over. Standing in the shade he could feel it drying in cool lines on his skin. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Huh.” His first instinct was, as always, to cause trouble. Having Brad stuffed into a tiny stall in a shady corner of a campground didn’t sound particularly enjoyable. He was already starting to feel itchy and restless just thinking about it.

But therein lay the rub: he was trying to be, if not good, at least _better_ , even if he was still resistant to the idea that they had to have a conversation about his behaviour. He’d decided he was going to make a concerted effort to be less of a thoughtless shitheel, and whether or not he liked or agreed with them, he was fairly certain throwing a wrench into Brad’s plans purely because they sounded boring to him fell squarely under ‘thoughtless shitheel’ territory.

“Okay,” he said again, fidgeting idly with his hair until he had a thought. One was all it took. “You’re kinda tucked out of the way over here, huh?”

Brad eyed him. “This section of the market square gets the least amount of direct sunlight,” he said. “I need to be able to see what I’m doing.”

“Hell yeah, sure,” Taako said, vaguely aware he probably wouldn’t be able to ride the high of his self-satisfaction through the whole weekend but gamely determined to try. “Makes sense. You giving out samples or anything?”

Brad opened his mouth. Closed it. “I could,” he conceded. “Why do you ask?”

Taako grinned.

***

It wasn’t quite grifting nor quite showmanship, but it was close enough that he felt at home doing it.

A human woman was lingering ambivalently at the edge of a group clearly more invested in the pitch of the mess tent’s resident wine-seller than she was. He caught her eye, lips curling into a practiced smile. She smiled back reflexively. A good sign.

“You look like someone who appreciates a good beer,” he said. The shimmering, magically-imbued fabric of her clothes said she had more money than she knew what to do with. The callouses on her hands said she probably liked to think of herself as a down-to-earth, hands-on worker type.

He could tell from her expression that he’d nailed it. She barely glanced back before approaching him.

“Good eye,” she said. “So what is it you have here?”

“A porter, a red, and a lager. Small batch. Independently brewed by an employee of the Bureau. Fun, hmm?” A gamble. “Would you like to try one?”

Her eyes twinkled as she reached for a sample of the porter. “Is that so? Well, it’s always worth looking into new enterprises-” A gamble and a resounding hit. He had her number backwards and forwards. “Oh, this is delicious. Are they here as well? Your business partner?” She placed the empty sampler cup back on the tray and he turned his wrist to give her better access to the sample of red ale next to it, making sure he touched it with the hand he was wearing the Ring of Frost on before she took it.

He let her run with that misunderstanding. The floppy sunhat he was wearing was casting long shadows over his face. It was clear she hadn’t recognized him, and he had a feeling it would only complicate things if she did. “We have a stall in the corner of the market, if you’d like to meet him,” he told her, already turning to lead the way.

“I would _love_ that,” she smiled. “Those Goldcliff wineries produce great products, to be sure, but there’s really nothing like a good homebrew. And you know, there are really so many underappreciated brewers in Faerûn. I’ve been to some really wonderful dwarven breweries- have you had the chance to visit the one south of the Cloak Woods? It’s-”

He heard the pause when she saw him, and tensed.

“You know,” she said, after a moment, “I think this is the first orcish beer I’ve had the chance to try! Cecilia Vindelhaus, it’s truly a pleasure, and your name is-?”

“Brad Bradson,” Brad smiled, carefully manoeuvring a hand through the opening at the front of the stall to take hers.

Despite having a very clear and intimate understanding of just how passively charismatic Brad really was, he’d somehow never seen it at work on somehow _else_ : it was a strangely awe-inspiring experience to watch Cecilia glance down at her hand where it was enveloped in Brad’s, to watch the shift in expression on her golden-brown face, and to realize she was already thoroughly taken with him. 

“-really just a delight to see that the Bureau is encouraging its employees to pursue personal interests-” Vindelhaus was gushing with an increasingly silly smile as Brad thanked her for her interest and support.

Taako just sort of watched them interact, struck into both silence and stillness.

It was easy to forget, somehow. He made it easy to forget he was a bard. He didn’t possess the flash and drama of most bards Taako had met. Even Johann had carried with him a certain sad weightiness, the kind that tended to appeal to people who treated everything with undue gravity. 

Brad’s charisma, he realized, was so quiet it was almost _dangerous_. The core defense any given person had against the charms of a bard was the knowledge that they were being charmed in the first place. It was much harder to not buy into something you’d never even realized you were being sold.

He barely even registered what he was saying or doing as she finally gathered up her purchase and excused herself, crate of bottles cradled in her arms. He was pretty sure he’d remembered to smile.

“I think that went well,” Brad said cheerfully.

Taako eyed him.

***

The sun was hot and people were being difficult.

 _“Don’t take a sample if you know you’re not going to buy anything, homies,”_ he wanted to snap. He’d started the day with a bang and now he couldn’t seem to reproduce it: he was selling a bottle here, four or five there, but no one was buying in bulk the way the woman from the morning was.

He was coaxing a pair of giddily rebellious young half-elves to the stand on the promise of selling them something that would almost certainly infuriate their elven father to see them drinking when he turned around and found Brad closed in by a small circle of richly-dressed ingénues in a variety of genders and races.

There was a dwarven woman with rubies braided into her rich black beard; a decidedly ambiguous dragonborn in an open-sided silk shift with gold-painted scales; a male tabaxi who was grooming himself primly when he thought Brad wasn’t looking; even a large-eyed deep-sea triton with lights flickering under the ridges of their face and head crest huddled close to stall, clearly glad for the shade.

One of the half-elves with him murmured a phrase he recognized as a bastardized mixture of Elvish and Common cursing.

“He’s kind of hot, though, isn’t he? For an orc,” her brother replied in Elvish. Taako gave him a look.

“He’s too old for you, my man. For an orc,” he said snidely, also in Elvish, and the half-elf bristled.

“And too big,” his sister laughed. “How would that even _work?_ Pretty sure even your slutty ass would lose that battle, Erlar, and if I have to ask my goddess for her blessing to heal you again after you spent an afternoon fucking every guard on father’s estate, I’m pretty sure she’s going to abandon me.”

Taako bit his tongue, trying simultaneously not to laugh and not to feel terribly nostalgic for his own misspent youth.

“You’re a cleric, you have to heal me, Phee,” Erlar bickered.

“Don’t call me Phee, you hedonist,” ‘Phee’ snapped. She was probably one of the many elves named ‘Phina’ running around Faerûn, Taako mused. “And I worship a goddess of _wisdom_ -”

He took this opportunity to sidle his way in between the dwarf and the triton. “Six red ales for those little shits over there,” he told Brad in Common, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the bickering siblings.

Brad beamed at him and then frowned. “Are you sure they’re _old_ enough-?”

“They’re elves,” Taako shrugged, and started piling bottles into a bag as Brad handed them to him. “Half-elves. Whatever. They’re probably like a hundo-fifty, don’t worry about it. Who the fuck are all these people?” Now that he was inside the ring of them, he could clearly tell that they’d all already made purchases and were just lingering to drink and chat.

Brad smiled. “Miss Vindelhaus sent her friends our way,” he said. “And they’ve all said they’ll stop by with their friends tomorrow, as well. I’m-”

For an inexcusably long moment, Taako resented him. He resented him for being better at this than he was. He resented the attention he was giving to strangers. He resented that he’d spent the better part of the day in the shade, even if the sun was now creeping up the front of the stall, washing the base of it in light.

He was tired and hot and wanted to quit.

He shouldered his way through the small crowd, bottles in tow, and thrust them into the arms of the half-elves. “Don’t fuck too many of the snobs here,” he muttered to them in Elvish as the half-elf-probably-named-Phina paid him, “these types tend to get clingy.”

He was acutely aware he’d left Brad hanging in the middle of a sentence. He didn’t trust himself to be nice.

***

He was brusque with Brad for the rest of the day, and there was no pretending Brad hadn’t noticed. He was smart enough not to confront him about it while they were working, but Taako didn’t miss his concerned looks or small frowns.

By the time they started packing up the stall, he was dreading being done. Every other stall had packed up hours ago to join the revelry.

“You have the padlock?” Brad asked him, and he handed it to him.

He sort of just stood and watched as Brad locked up the storage, feeling oddly trapped. The sun was barely visible over the trees, and it cast such long shadows that his stretched out across the grass to rest just at Brad’s feet.

He looked up to find Brad giving him an uncertain smile.

“Thank you for all your hard work today, Taako,” he said quietly. There was carefulness to it that made him feel like he’d been punched.

He grimaced. “Sure. No big.”

The silence stretched on long enough for Taako to start drawing terrible conclusions about his life and decisions.

“I don’t-” Brad started to say, and then stopped. “I’ll admit I’m not sure what it is I did to upset you, but if you prefer, you can stay in my cabin and I can… find somewhere else to sleep.”

He jerked his head up, affronted at the idea but also too exhausted and overwhelmed express why. “ _No_ ,” he snapped instead, and then buried his face in his hands and sat down on the grass.

“…No?” Brad sounded absolutely bewildered.

He wondered if sitting silently for long enough would make Brad give up and go away. He wanted that. He didn’t want that. He didn’t know what he wanted.

“No,” he repeated, knowing he sounded sullen. “Sorry. Sometimes I’m shitty.”

Brad said nothing. He just stood silently, still with one hand on the locked storage unit behind the stall.

“What, is cha boy just fucking talking to _himself_ now?” he snarled, lifting his head, and then hated himself for it, because even as he was saying it he realized _why_ Brad wasn’t saying anything.

Brad was waiting patiently for him to double-back on that admission, to deny it or make a joke out of it, because that’s what he always did: he started admitting he fucked up and then he chickened out, tried to snatch back that little sliver of vulnerability he was giving up.

He pressed his hands back over his face, groaning. “Sorry. Fuck. Sorry, Brad. Why do you or Kravitz put up with this? Yikes. I mean, I’m just- _yikes_.”

Even with his hands over his face again, he could tell Brad thought he was navigating a razor’s edge just from the way he was moving.

Like he was approaching a wounded but still dangerous animal, Taako thought.

“Is there something I can do?” Brad asked him gently. “I… don’t know what set this off, Taako. I’m sorry.”

He snorted, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Don’t fucking apologize to me, Bradson. You didn’t _do_ anything. I’m just-”

Tired, he wanted to say. Jealous. Sick of people. Sick of everything.

“…Taako,” he said finally, and it was the truest thing he’d ever said. “I’m just Taako. I’m just like this. Like… I’m just fucking constantly on the edge of doing and saying fucked up shit to people because it’s _hard_ and I’m fucking _tired_ and-” His jaw ached. He realized he’d been grinding his teeth. “No. Fuck. I don’t know why I’m like this,” he admitted. “I just am. That’s just… the Taako experience, I guess.” He sighed. “™,” he added bitterly. He was suddenly very tired.

He heard Brad moving across the grass, and just continued to sit there, head in hands.

“What can I do?” Brad asked him again, closer now. He sounded like he’d squatted down in front of him.

“I don’t know,” Taako muttered.

“That’s not very helpful,” Brad pointed out gently, and Taako snorted.

“Just fucking… leave my useless ass here, I guess. Go crash. I’ll figure it out. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Brad’s tone was bizarrely unreadable. “Uh,” he said, “no.”

Taako squinted at him from between his hands. “No?”

Brad looked exasperated. “No.”

He was starting to feel irritated. “Why the fuck not?”

Brad raised an eyebrow. “Because I don’t want to.”

“I’m giving you an _out_ , my guy,” Taako snarled, “and I’m not usually that fucking _generous_ -”

“Okay,” Brad said, and sat down on the grass with him. Taako watched as he started casually cleaning his glasses.

For a long moment, he was so angry he was actually speechless. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Are you _trying_ to pick a fight with me?”

“Sure,” Brad said, mouth a thin line. “We can talk about this, or we can fight about this, or we can get into an actual fight, if that’s what it takes. Here’s what not going to happen: I’m not going to leave you here so you can have… some sort of breakdown and then pretend it didn’t happen tomorrow. No.”

Taako stared at him.

“No,” Brad repeated firmly, not breaking eye contact.

“You’re a stubborn piece of shit,” Taako muttered.

“Yes,” Brad admitted easily. “I’m also uselessly competitive, have a bad habit of flirting with people so they’ll give me attention, and I’m prone to- is showboating actually a real word in Common? I keep forgetting to check,” he mused, resting his chin in his hand. “Did you have any other comments you’d like to make?”

Taako just gaped at him. “When the fuck do _you_ ever flirt-” he croaked.

“Not at work,” Brad said cheerfully. “The Director had a lot to say about that in my first month at the Bureau, I assure you.”

Taako opened his mouth. Closed it.

“Why exactly do you think I wanted to be in that group with you and Magnus and Merle during the Trial of Teamwork so badly, Taako?” Brad asked. His smile was a bit weird. “I don’t like being ignored. I don’t mind if people don’t like me, but I _hate_ being ignored.”

“I didn’t ignore you,” Taako protested. “We literally _just_ met that day-”

“That was _not_ the first time we met, Taako,” Brad told him. “Why do you think I approached you at the Candlenights party?” He grimaced. “You _still_ didn’t remember me.”

Now that Taako knew what he was looking for, it was unmistakable: Brad was still bitter over being snubbed. His pride was clearly still wounded. It was ridiculous. It was a level of pettiness he had never even thought to aspire to achieve. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or scream.

Brad laughed at his expression. “I have no idea why you’re so worried about what I think of _you_ when half the reason I made sure to track you down the morning after the Candlenights party was to make absolutely sure you didn’t forget who I was again. There was no way I was going to stand for it if you were so drunk you couldn’t remember that it was _me_ you’d propositioned.”

Taako strangled a scream. “You’re the _worst_ ,” he hissed, and Brad laughed again. “You’re- you can’t be-” he struggled, both infuriated and awestruck. “Bradson, are you telling me- are you _really_ fucking telling me- you hunted me down like an _animal_ before I could leave the base because you were mad I wouldn’t _notice you?_ I was so embarrassed I wanted to _die_ ,” he shrieked.

Brad didn’t look even the slightest bit sorry. “You can’t tell me it didn’t work,” he said cheerfully, shrugging.

Taako made a noise like a deflating balloon. “You’re a _monster_ ,” he said with what might have been grudging admiration. “Cree- _zus_. Fuck.”

Brad held up his hands defensively. “I just wanted to bother you enough to make sure you’d stop forgetting who I was,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to take advantage of you. I’m petty, not evil.”

Once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop. “Fucking- oh my _gods_ ,” he wheezed. “This _entire_ time, Bradson- this whole fucking time I thought you were seriously just being some- some _holier_ - _than_ - _thou_ \- I- my dude, until this _exact fucking moment_ I believed those lines you dropped about wanting to ‘set things straight’ so there were ‘no misunderstandings’- and you _wanted_ me to hate that conversation,” he fumed, still laughing incredulously, “I thought you just didn’t notice how much I hated what was happening, but _no_ , that was your fucking _endgame_?”

Brad was very clearly trying to look less pleased with himself than he was. “Again, you can’t tell me it didn’t work,” he repeated, and then dipped his head a little in acknowledgement. “Though, um, not exactly as intended.”

Taako shook his head, disbelieving. “You’re the fucking worst,” he said again. “Got a little more of Taako’s attention than you counted on, _huh?_ ”

Brad smiled at him. His stomach flipped. He hated him for it. “I’m certainly not complaining,” he hummed. “It was definitely a best-case scenario for Brad,” he joked.

“Don’t step on my brand,” Taako scolded, and then wheezed quietly, trying not to laugh again. “Y’know, it was wild enough when I thought you just, like, stumbled into this not really giving a shit either way. The idea that you’re in this mess because you wanted to make a fucking _impression_ on me is… hoo boy. Bit off a little more than you could chew, huh, Stamps?”

Brad gave him a sly, sidelong look. “I think we’ve established that I know exactly what to do with any amount of you,” he murmured flirtatiously.

Taako felt his face start to burn. Brad grinned.

“The _worst_ ,” he muttered again, burying his face in his hands as Brad started moving closer.

He moved in so close Taako could feel his body heat. “May I?”

“Fucking go for it, I guess,” Taako muttered, running his hands through his hair. He felt Brad’s laugh as much as heard it when Brad leaned down to kiss him.

It was easy to get lost in kissing him, and somehow easier in light of how ridiculous his life was.

“You’re a shithead,” he mumbled against Brad’s lips, winding his arms around his neck. Brad hummed and pulled him flush against his chest. “I can’t fucking believe you. Ugh.”

Brad rumbled with suppressed laughter. “I’m not going to apologize,” he murmured.

 Taako nipped at him reproachfully, running his hands over his broad, muscular shoulders with a slightly resentful sense of growing desire. “And why the fuck not, huh?”

He could feel Brad’s smile. “I wouldn’t mean it,” he whispered. Taako whined as Brad cupped and fondled his ass appreciatively. “But you’re welcome to make an argument about why I should regret it when it’s the reason I know what it feels like to make the most powerful Transmutation wizard in the universe come so hard he can’t speak,” he teased.

Taako’s face went from pleasantly warm to almost volcanic nearly instantly. He swallowed against dryness. “Sure do think a lot of yourself, don’t you, Bradson?” he accused. His voice shook. He was very fucking hard, and there was no way Brad didn’t know it.

“Oh?” Brad hummed, squeezing Taako’s ass and pressing a thigh more firmly between his legs. Taako choked on a moan. “Should I not? Am I wrong? Should I be looking for new ways to make you beg me to fuck you?” He murmured, teeth working at the edge of Taako’s ear between words.

Taako curled his fingers into his collar, face burning and breathing unsteady. “ _Hoo_ boy,” he croaked. He could feel Brad’s erection pressed against his stomach. “I don’t- I don’t remember ever begging you for anything,” he said shakily. This was, of course, an egregious lie, and he knew it.

Judging from Brad’s little smile, he did too. “That sounds a bit like a challenge,” he murmured, lifting Taako up against him and rutting between his legs with long, but not forceful, thrusts. “Do _you_ regret it?”

Taako clung to his shirt, trying gamely not to wail at the feeling of Brad grinding teasingly against his erection.

“Do you,” Brad purred into his ear, “regret me coming after you? Do you regret asking me to fuck you?”

He could barely think, let alone speak. When he tried to answer, it came out a breathy yelp.

“Hm?” Brad’s teeth were fire on the delicate edge of his ear. “I didn’t catch that.”

No,” he whined. “ _Fuck_ no-”

Brad laughed at him and tipped him back until he was sprawled on the grass with Brad above him. Brad looked extremely pleased with himself.

“I love that I can make you like this,” he hummed, kissing his throat as he palmed him through his skirt. Taako scrabbled at his back with hands that couldn’t seem to decide what they were doing. “Gods, Taako, you’re so gorgeous.”

Taako whined high in his throat. “ _This_ enough attention for you, my dude?” he joked weakly.

Brad’s slow smile promised a lot of things. “No,” he said softly, sliding his hand up Taako’s skirt and pressing a finger gently against his asshole through his underwear. “As much as I like the way you look at me when you’re desperate for me to fuck you,” he whispered, grinning when Taako arched at his touch, “I love the way you look at me when I’m inside you. I love how responsive you are.” Taako whimpered. Brad set his teeth against his ear, letting him gasp and shake. “And I love that it’s impossible for you to act like you’re above it all when you’ve got me balls deep in your ass.”

Taako wheezed out a laugh that was almost a moan. Just the suggestion of it, the flirtation with vulgarity, made him want it even more. “What, is this a _‘teach you to ignore me, fucker’_ thing?” he mumbled, trying to stay focused on anything but the desire to rock down on Brad’s teasing fingers.

“Maybe a little,” Brad admitted, sliding his hand away to palm Taako’s erection through his underwear again. “You have to admit: it’s hard to ignore me now, isn’t it?”

“Yuh-huh,” he whined. “Gods, I want your dick so _fffucking bad-_ ”

Brad kissed him. “Hm?”

“Just fuck me already, _please_ , fuck,” he begged, and Brad kissed him stupid. “There’s lube in my bag-”

As he lay panting, splayed out on his back on the grass, palming himself for the smallest relief, he stared up at the darkening sky and had a thought.

“This is a dumb as hell place to bone down, actually,” he said aloud when Brad returned and crouched down between his legs.

“Probably,” Brad admitted. “It’s still relatively light out. Besides, the administrative building has night staff, so there’s a real chance someone might catch us.” He did not, in truth, look very concerned by that thought, sitting as he was between Taako’s thighs, caressing him with one hand and touching himself with the other. “Do you want to go to the cabin?”

Taako looked up at him, met his heavy-lidded eyes, and then down at the thick, inviting erection he was stroking.

“I just really want you to fuck me,” he said stupidly. “I don’t really give a shit where? Also, I want _this_ -” he grabbed Brad’s dick, fondling it appreciatively “-in my fucking mouth, if we’re having honesty hour here. _Fuck_ , you have such a choice dick-”

“You could sit on my face again,” Brad invited, rising to his knees, and then strangled a groan when Taako, opportunistic as always, got impatient and sank his mouth down over the head of his cock. It had been at mouth level, which had honestly seemed like an invitation to him.

He loved the weight of it in his mouth, loved the way his jaw ached as he took its girth between his lips. Brad’s hands tangled in his hair and then let go. His hips stuttered before he forced them to be still.

Brad’s jaw was clenched. “Or you could do that,” he said tightly. “One of us needs to start fingering you or I’m going to end up just giving up and coming in your mouth. _Gods_ , you look so good like this.”

Taako sucked on his head noisily, relishing the way his eyes slid closed and his nostrils flared. “Lube,” he demanded. When he reached for it, Brad held it a little away.

“Will you let me try something?” he asked, stripping off Taako’s underwear.

Taako squinted at him. “Okay. Sure.”

He wasn’t sure what was going on as Brad sank back down into a sitting position until he beckoned him closer. “What, you want me to fuck _your_ mouth?” Taako asked. “I mean, sure, but you could’ve just said-”

It was at this point that Brad successfully navigated his way into a position he was able to transition into Taako sitting with his legs over his shoulders, and he rose back into a kneel, supporting Taako’s weight with his hands.

He was very good with his tongue, Taako realized again. He clung to Brad’s hair for support, keening desperately as a tongue flicked against the underside of his head before transitioning back into long, slow sucks along his shaft. “Holy _shit_ ,” he whined. Brad shifted him to push the lube into his hand before repositioning his hands under his ass again.

His fingers were shaking as he tried to uncap it, and he couldn’t seem to find his own asshole for a solid ten seconds as Brad bobbed his head, sucking him from root to tip.

He panted and mewled as he clumsily breached himself- in his haste, he’d used too much lubricant, and it was dribbling down the insides of his legs. “ _Gods_ , I need you to fuck me with that big, gorgeous cock,” he begged, pistoning his finger in and out. “I want you to rail me until I forget what it’s like to live without you fucking me.”

Brad’s fingers tightened on his ass. A rumble seemed to travel from his toes up through his throat. Taako gasped.

He pushed in his second finger in a rush, wishing he was sucking Brad’s dick, missing the velvety weight of it. “This was a,” he complained, gasping, “cheap fucking move, Bradson-”

He rushed through pushing his third finger in, too, and was panting, overwhelmed by the sensation of Brad’s mouth and his own fingers thrusting in and out of his ass.

“Your turn,” he gasped, fidgeting the lube into one of Brad’s hands, almost dropping it, almost making Brad drop him.

He clung desperately to the back of Brad’s shirt as he pressed a thick finger in, trying not to wail too loudly.

“I need you to fuck me,” he babbled, “oh _gods_ , Brad, I need you to rail me-”

Brad’s fingering was also getting a little clumsy with impatience, and as he worked his second finger in, Taako cried out much louder than he’d wanted to, feeling the sudden heat and pressure of something roughly stimulating his prostate. He bit down on the side of his hand, moaning incoherently.

He knew he was close. Without anything to focus on but his own pleasure, he was almost out of his mind between Brad’s slow sucking and teasing and the way he was finger-fucking his ass. He should’ve known it would happen, but he couldn’t think, wasn’t used to having to.

Brad had barely worked his third finger in and was starting to finger him in earnest when it happened, and when he realized it was happening, it was already too late.

“I’m going to- c-come-” he tried to warn, but the full flush of it had already hit him, and he came like that, with Brad sucking his cock and fingering his ass. The orgasm blew through him like a tornado, but even as it was happening, he hated that it had happened so soon.

Brad, gentleman that he was, discreetly swallowed despite how unexpectedly Taako had foisted that particular dilemma on him. Taako clung to his hair, panting and cursing himself.

“Fuck,” he muttered, “fuck!” Brad’s fingers were still in his ass. Even when they weren’t moving, it was enough overstimulation to make him shake. “ _Fuck!_ ”

Brad squeezed his ass comfortingly with the hand that wasn’t knuckle deep inside it. “It happens to the best of us,” he said generously, peering up from between his legs. “Will you be alright if I put you down?”

Taako grumbled, frustrated, and then nodded. He hissed as Brad carefully lay him back down on the grass and slipped his fingers free. “Ugh, _fuck_ ,” he complained.  

Brad laughed and kissed him. “Just give me a couple minutes.” Taako lay on his back, watching Brad stroke himself, watching his face as he fucked his hand, knowing it was taking him longer than it might have because he suddenly had to temper his expectations after a lot of buildup and anticipation.

It wasn’t fair. He still wanted it. Even feeling like his bones had turned to putty, he wanted it.

He fully intended to offer to return the favour by blowing him, but what came out of his mouth instead was,

“We could still fuck,”

which was certainly truer to his real urges, as much as he loved sucking Brad’s dick.

Brad’s hand stuttered. “What?”

In that moment alone, he both decided to stick the landing- “We could still fuck,” he repeated, holding Brad’s gaze- and suddenly remembered his conversation with Kravitz. “Uh. If that’s good with you, my dude. We don’t have to, I mean.”

Brad was still stroking himself, but his pace had slowed considerably below one that could be expected to bring on an orgasm. It almost seemed like an afterthought. “What?” he asked again, seeming a little muddled, and then shook his head, eyebrows furrowing. “Would that even feel good for you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it,” Taako said, which was true. “It seems like it’d be a lot, but like… I like it when it’s a lot, anyway?” This was equally true. “So. Yeah. Um. We could… we could try it? As long as you’re actually down and not like just going along with it because I-”

Brad looked intensely exasperated. “Taako, you’re actually _insane_ if you think I don’t still want to fuck you right now,” he laughed. It sounded a little painful. Precome was beading at the tip of his cock. “But it’s-” He hissed in a breath through his nose as he spread it over the head, slicking his stroking hand with it. “I want it to feel good for you. There’s no point otherwise.”

“If it doesn’t, we can stop, right?” Taako offered tentatively, chewing his lip. He knew it was kind of a cruel prospect.

Brad looked similarly distressed by the concept but gave him a tense smile anyway. “Of course. We can always stop if you need to,” he confirmed. He looked like he was both getting his hopes up and was very nervous about getting his hopes up.

Taako felt a little wobbly getting to his knees. His nerves were still buzzing. Less than they had been immediately after he’d orgasmed, but still decidedly more sensitive than they were regularly.

“Are you sure-?” Brad started to ask. Taako kissed him, squeaking when his hands smoothed tentatively over the swell of his ass.

“Are you?” Taako mumbled, straddling him.

Brad laughed awkwardly. “If it gets to be too much, just punch me or something.” He swallowed. For a moment it looked like he was going to say something else. He didn’t.

Taako lined up Brad’s erection against his asshole and then hesitated. He could feel Brad’s pulse where his hand was wrapped around it.

Brad saw him hesitate. “We don’t have to-” he assured him, hands lifting off his hips.

“Fuck it, yolo,” Taako said breathlessly and pushed down over it.

Even with just the head of it in his ass, the sensation was intense and strange and utterly overwhelming. He clung to the front of Brad’s shirt, mewling. His dick twitched weakly, and he mewled at that feeling too.

Brad looked incredibly torn. “We should-” he started to say, and then closed his eyes and breathed deeply and carefully. “We should probably stop.”

Taako shook his head, too overwhelmed to speak, and whined high in his nose as he pushed down a little farther.

“Is this okay?” Brad asked him, trying to smooth back his hair to see his expression but accidentally yanking on it in his clumsy urgency. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Taako shuddered and moaned, leaning into the hand in his hair. He was starting to come to a tentative but, thus far, very promising conclusion about how he felt about this experiment.

He moaned incoherently as he pushed down a little further, legs shaking so badly he had to lean against Brad for support.

“Taako?” Brad prompted. His breathing had gone a little unsteady.

His whole body felt like it was going to shake apart as he slowly bottomed out, mouth open and producing a consistent noise he was utterly unable to identify.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore softly, leaning his weight against Brad’s chest.

“Taako?” Brad prompted again, trying to tilt his face up.

Taako let him, half-delirious and a very, _very_ sensitive sort of partially erect. “F-fuck me,” he groaned, curling his arms around Brad’s neck. His legs didn’t seem to be working. “Fuck me.” He could feel his ass twitching around Brad’s cock. Brad could very clearly also feel this.

Brad closed his eyes again and breathed in deeply through his nose. “Stop me if it’s ever too much,” he said firmly. “Taako?”

Taako nodded weakly. When Brad took him by the hips and started thrusting slowly into him, he let out a weird, thin scream he didn’t even know was coming from him until Brad stopped, looking alarmed.

“Kee- keep going,” he begged, clinging to Brad’s collar, cheek pressed against his chest. “D-don’t stop.”

When Brad started fucking him again, he felt like he was traveling between the planes of reality. He wasn’t in pain, but it wasn’t quite pleasure, either- it was like his nerves were speaking in tongues, unable to quite decide what was happening. He stopped being able to perceive gravity. He barely noticed that he’d lost his grip on Brad’s shirt until he realized he was leaning back and Brad had caught him before he fell.

“Are you sure you’re-” Gravity was starting to reassert itself.

“ _Har- harder_ ,” he begged, reaching down to touch where Brad’s dick was sliding into him, to feel it as it filled and left him. “Brad _. Brad_ ,” he breathed, and then gasped as he felt Brad’s dick twitch inside him.

Brad swore softly in some language, his pace quickening. It might even have been Common. Taako couldn’t tell.

Taako just moaned as Brad’s hips began to slap against his ass.

It wasn’t just pure sensation anymore. Pleasure was definitely there, too, in a raw, frantic sort of way that made him mewl every time Brad’s thrusting made his now respectably hard and extremely sensitive erection bounce against his stomach. He didn’t even think of touching it. It seemed like a terrible idea.

Brad’s thrusting was starting to get a little erratic.

“C-come on,” Taako baited. He wanted to feel him come. “F-for- for m-me-” As Brad buried his mouth in the crook of his neck, pace growing increasingly more urgent, he had a strange, impossible-seeming realization: he was going to come again.

He had neither the time nor the wits to express his surprise at this before it happened, and then reality broke apart in a way he had no comparison for.

His body was all in pieces: his ass, pushing him higher and higher into unreality with every hard pulse inside it; his fingers, aching from all the white-knuckled clinging he’d been doing; his heart, thundering in his chest; his skin, getting colder by the second as his sweat dried; his dick, weakly spitting only a very little of some thin, semi-translucent liquid onto the underside of his skirt that he couldn’t reconcile with what he was used to seeing.

He pieced himself back together very slowly, recognizing with vacant wonder that bits of him were attached to other bits.

Brad was watching him closely, cradling him in his lap, still thrust to the hilt inside of him.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

Taako tried to answer, he really did, but he found he’d forgotten every language he spoke. He gave Brad a shaky thumbs up, and then, for absolutely no reason he could discern, tried to high five him.

Brad laughed, murmuring apologies when Taako made a soft little noise of complaint at how it was jostling him. He vaguely felt Brad doing something around his hips. He couldn’t identify what.

“I’m pulling out,” Brad told him, and as slow and as gentle as he was being, it still felt intense in a way that actually was kind of unpleasant. Taako leaned against him, feeling come dribble out of his ass onto the grass.

He suddenly realized what Brad was up to: he was holding his skirt up out of the way so it didn’t get soiled. Taako was oddly touched by the gesture. He realized his hat had fallen off. He wondered when that had happened.

When the dribble slowed to a drip, Brad lowered and straightened first his skirt, then the rest of him, pulling his sleeve back up onto his shoulder and fixing his hair.

Taako stared at him blearily until he put his hat back on his head.

“We have to pass through the main area to get back to the cabins,” Brad whispered. “I’ll carry you. I’ll say you’re sun-touched.” Distantly, he wanted to make fun of Brad for using a word he’d never heard anyone younger than sixty use. Instead, he nodded. His head felt huge and ungainly.

After Brad had finished straightening himself up, he gathered Taako up in his arms carefully.

While they were passing the administrative building, someone cleared their throat. Brad tensed. Taako was entirely too fatigued to care.

“Hey, uh,” an unfamiliar voice said, “you’re not the first and you, uh… you won’t be the last, but we really do appreciate a little more _discretion_.” It sounded human, he decided. And annoyed. He giggled unrepentantly. Brad hushed him. “I had to hustle my ass over here in the middle of cleaning up vomit in Tent C to cover up the noise you two were making before someone came to see what was going on.”

“We’re very sorry,” Brad said. He sounded genuinely apologetic. Taako wondered if he really was. “We didn’t mean to cause you any inconvenience.”

“Regardless, I need to ID you two and put you on the list- if you pull this shit again, you’re out of here. Keep it to your cabin or you’re _gone_. You only get one warning, you understand me?”

“I do,” Brad said seriously.

Taako listened to him give his employee information and nearly drifted off.

“-info on your friend, too,” the probable-human said firmly, and then paused. “Wait, is that an _elf_?”

“Uh,” Brad said nervously. “It’s really not what it looks like-” It took him a second to realize why.

The pitch of the stranger’s voice had taken on a decidedly less annoyed, more alarmed quality. Taako felt defensive magic brewing in the air.

He lifted his head lazily. “I’m not dead,” he yawned, “he didn’t kill me. Cha boy fucks who he wants. That a problem, homie?”

The person was, in fact, a human. He was a human man in his mid-twenties wearing a grey uniform and a nametag that said REID.

Reid looked surprised. “Oh,” he said. “Of course not. I’m not paid to care about that, it’s just a matter of _where_ you’re doing it,” he commented. “I am still going to need your information, sir.”

Taako tilted up his hat, exposing his face.

He saw the recognition flash on his face, then the incredulity. “Are you- are you _Taako_?” His eyes flickered up to Brad and back down again. The bafflement on his face only grew. “Uh-”

Taako gave him his biggest, most shit-eating grin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako tries to be good. It doesn't pan out.
> 
> Brad and Taako talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there isn't sex in this chapter and that shocks no one more than me
> 
> also there's fantasy racism and it's close enough in form and structure to real world grossness that it could be potentially triggering maybe??? be safe, be warned

He roused from a particularly deep and unparseable meditative dream with the peculiar thought that he hadn’t meditated so deeply in more than a century- not since before he boarded the Starblaster, at the very least.

Without opening his eyes, he stretched out with grunt and then rolled over, looking for warmth. Instead of finding it, he accidentally knocked his fingers into something cool and hard.

He groped along it. It was wood, smooth but not finished, and not particularly high, with nothing above or beyond it he could feel.

He searched the other way and found a cold stone wall.

Opening his eyes reluctantly, and with no small feeling of annoyance, he realized the ceiling was much closer than he’d expected. The bed was also smaller than he’d expected. The barrier around the mattress was another puzzling touch, but he noticed a gap a little wider than him in it near his feet. Cool early morning light was filtering in through a shuttered window on the far wall.

When he peered over the edge at the surprisingly distant floor, he realized what was going on.

“At least you put cha boy in the top bunk,” he muttered, more annoyed than he had any right to be. He fumbled his way down the ladder, grimacing at the way the coolness of the stone floor seeped through any meagre comfort the thin rug might have provided.

Sure enough, Brad curled into the bottom bunk, back against the wall and knees drawn up to fit into a bed entirely too narrow and short for someone of his stature. Despite everything, he was still sleeping soundly, side rising and falling so slowly it was almost imperceptible.

Taako wanted to wake him up. He also realized that it both couldn’t have been more than four hours maximum since he’d fallen asleep- the air still had the particular chill of very early morning in the summer, and the light that was creeping in was a sort of anemic grey- and that it had to be hard for Brad already to keep this kind of unnatural schedule. Besides, he’d decided he was going to be a little less terrible, and as much as he hated to admit it, this particular urge probably qualified.

He lingered awkwardly by the side of the bed until his feet felt uncomfortably chilled.

Without anything else to really do, he shuffled on some clothes and boots and left the cabin to search for food. The realization that he hadn’t really eaten the day before aside from a couple of quick snacks in slow moments hit him as soon as he came near enough to the mess tents to smell what was cooking inside, and his insides roused with a clamour.

At this hour in the morning, there were very few other people awake aside from a vigilant, stone-faced Dwarf polishing his axe, a couple of drunken halflings swaying in their chairs who very well may not have gone to sleep yet, and a very sleepy-looking human woman manning the mess station.

She blinked owlishly at him when he approached. Her nametag said LENALI. She’d put it on upside down.

“Good morning,” she murmured. “What can I get for you, sir?”

His guts roiled. They were making it hard to think. “Uh. Is ‘everything’ an option?” he asked. She laughed.

“No, but I can toss all our favourites onto a plate for you, if you want,” she told him. “Dietary restrictions?”

“None I remember right now,” he answered stupidly, and she laughed again and started piling fried potatoes and a sautéed meat and egg production he couldn’t identify and some sort of rice dish onto a plate.

“Do you want soup?” she asked, hesitating with her hand on the ladle.

“Wait, does that go on the plate, too?” As soon as he said it, he felt like an idiot. His brain was having trouble spinning back up to full function. There was something about the stillness and the peace of the early morning that was just making him feel slow.

She laughed again and poured some in a bowl for him and set it and a chunk of hearty bread on the tray beside his plate before handing it carefully over the glass barrier.

He took it and just sort of stared blankly at it for a second.

“Wait,” he mumbled, watching his distorted reflection in the surface of the soup, “do I not like… pay for this?”

She smiled. “Food catering services were financed by one of the Bureau’s primary donors.” When he just stared at her, she looked like she was trying not to laugh again. “You don’t have to pay anything. Please, sit and enjoy.”

He did as he was told, trying not wolf down his food too quickly despite the complaints of his stomach, and mulled over that concept. A suspicion was prickling under his skin.

This whole donor’s camp production was decisively not Lucretia’s style, no matter how savvy it was- of the Starblaster crew, the most likely to spin up a shindig like this one would be Merle, who just generally enjoyed outdoorsy revelries and meeting people, but he didn’t have the business sense required to put it into action without losing money.

Merle’s ideas didn’t include such sensible things as food catering or financiers. He was more likely to invite everyone to a giant potluck and then shrug about how Pan would provide when they invariably ran out of food halfway through the second day.

Lucretia, on the other hand, liked things tidy. She liked speeches and banquets and silent auctions. She liked things with itineraries, things with fixed beginnings and absolute ends.

This place had none of that. If there had ever been plans in place, there weren’t any now. The whole camp had dissolved into wine and beer-fueled chaos halfway through the first day.

To him, at least, it was almost refreshing. There tended to be a lot less social posturing and sabotage when everyone involved was too drunk to recite their own titles and achievements without tripping over words.

He actually hadn’t seen Lucretia at all, he realized.

He sat there, slowly chewing at the tough crust of the bread, wondering idly if she was riding the weekend out in her cabin or if she hadn’t come, at least until he realized he could just dip it in the soup to soften it.

***

He was being so good.

He felt vaguely cheated by the knowledge that doing it just so he’d be praised tended to cheapen it in people’s eyes, so he’d be best served by keeping his mouth shut. He liked praise, and he’d worked damn hard.

First, he’d made sure nobody had thrown up on or around the stall during the night. No one had, but a couple of inconsiderate idiots had left a mess on the grass in front of the stall, so he had to contend with that.

Second, the sun was barely up and he’d already expended two spell slots: Knock to open the storage- he didn’t want to disturb Brad just to look for the key- and Levitate to go around the campsite with an empty crate and gather all the empty bottles their customers had left strewn around the place. He was particularly pleased with himself for that one.

Third, he’d intercepted and chatted up the late arrivals as they filtered out of the admin building, camp passes and cabin keys in hand. Making himself the welcome committee and helpfully guiding people to their cabins was a hell of a trick when it came to drumming up interest, and besides, it meant he was getting at them before that asshole of a sommelier in mess tent two could monopolize their business.

Fourth and finally, he’d gone ahead and set up the stand while he was waiting for Brad, though that was half out of boredom, half out of necessity as people started to trickle into the market looking for something to take the edge off their hangovers.

Still, he was being so, so good.

He had just sold his sixth bottle of lager when he had a terrible realization: the sun was up. The sun was well and truly up, and what thin wisps of cloud did hang in that sky were nowhere near it. It was the start of another bright, sunny day at the camp.

He’d been so fixated on being good and not waking Brad up that he’d completely forgotten, and now he found himself in a problematic position.

Abandoning his post wouldn’t look good on him. If Taako knew anything at all about building a brand, and he did, it was that reliability was key. Besides, they could be robbed, and he didn’t think his new buddy Reid would be into him turning someone to gold to get their profits back.

Doing nothing also wouldn’t look good on him. Brad would spend the entire day trapped in the cabin and there’d be no one to promote the brand while the other ran the stall, and that was without taking into consideration the fact that he was looking forward to an entire day without a break.

No matter what he did, he lost. All his efforts to be good had backfired. He’d fucked up.

He gave another customer his best _Taako- you know, from TV?_ smile as he took her money, too preoccupied to comprehend whatever it was she’d said to him.

There had to be something he could do.

***

After the third hour, he finally gave up.

“Oh- where’s the gentleman from yesterday?” a human woman of about forty asked him. It was a question he’d been getting a lot.

He made himself smile. “You know how it is, just taking it easy today,” Taako told her, biting his tongue when the inevitable _‘oh, that’s too bad, he’s just so charming, you know’_ came. “So come back tomorrow and get your fix, homie,” was always the follow-up, but even the knowledge that he was doing a damn good job of roping people into some small measure of brand loyalty was pale comfort when he considered that he was doomed to spend the entire day working for free without ever seeing the literal only reason he was there in the first place.

His mood was souring and he was struggling not to show it.

***

By three in the afternoon, the expression on his face was a grotesque rictus of a smile. His cheeks ached but he knew he couldn’t stop or he’d start screaming at people. The stand was doing extremely well, which meant, of course, that it was busy. He couldn’t decide if it would’ve been better or worse if it wasn’t.

He was exhausted and the only reason he didn’t have to piss was because he hadn’t had anything to drink since breakfast. He’d spent the last hour convincing himself that getting into the merchandise himself wasn’t a viable option.

People didn’t seem to notice. He smiled, he laughed, he humoured them, and they all bought it as completely genuine. He’d begun to ponder the pointlessness of ever having attempted stealth or adopt a disguise: it was starting to seem like the ultimate way to fly under the radar was just to be selling something.

He felt more faceless and ignored than he ever had while literally invisible. Even when he took his hat off to fan himself, people would look him dead in the face and somehow never register who he was. It was like they were staring through him.

By three-thirty he’d finally realized why he’d spent most of Friday feeling like Brad was putting more effort into charming these people than he’d ever spent on him.

By three forty-five he finally caved and opened his first beer.

***

By five he was tipsy enough to feel a little less miserable, but he could also feel his body starting to question both why he seemed to be putting off going to the bathroom and why he’d thought it would be a good idea to drink on an empty stomach.

He was using a brief lull in business to regret his life choices when, in Elvish, someone said,

“You don’t belong in there,”

and startled him so badly he nearly knocked over a stack of beer crates.

“Uhh, what? Oh.” It was an automatic response. Even as he was saying it, he’d already decided that someone had finally figured out who he was and was taking issue with how fundamentally wrong it was that he, Taako, celebrity chef and saviour of the universe, had been saddled with such a demeaning and thankless job. “Let me tell you, my man-”

“An elf of breeding as refined and superior as yours shouldn’t be trapped in there, selling this orcish _swill_ ,” his visitor clarified. “You should be out here, enjoying the company of your peers, not debasing yourself to please people who don’t recognize when they’re in the company of their betters. Come. Join me.”

Taako just looked at him, dumbfounded.

There was never a question that it was another elf speaking to him. Even without looking he could’ve identified this one as a sun elf just from the haughty, too-proper way he expressed himself in Elvish.

He was older, old enough to have fine streaks of silver in his fastidiously braided black hair, unusually tall, and genuinely quite handsome in a way elves rarely were. He wore the sleek, delicately embroidered robes distinct to elven dignitaries of a certain prestige.

“I had come with the intent to confirm for myself that the esteemed Bureau of Benevolence has really fallen prey to such foolish rhetoric as to have allowed not only the sale and consumption of some foul blunder of orcish production, but as to have exposed their sponsors directly to the beast,” the elven dignitary said, looking down his nose at the bottles lined up on the counter. “You can imagine, I’m sure, my disgust at discovering that my children, who despite the… _muddying_ influence of their mother’s heritage are as gifted and as beautiful as any elf, could be rendered drunk nearly to blindness and imbued with perverse, uncivilized urges by naught but the contents of a bottle free to any with the means to acquire it.” He pulled an empty bottle from a satchel at his side and placed it on the counter, all the while holding it gingerly between finger and thumb like something dead and rotting. “I think perhaps the only thing more shocking and unbelievable to me was their suggestion that the one who led them by the hand to the precipice of this folly was a fellow elf, but I see now that I was not deceived.”

As soon as he mentioned his children, Taako knew who he was. “Uh, yeah. Okay, so here’s the thing, my man-” he started, steeling himself for the task of having to explain the concept of ‘no refunds’ to someone who almost certainly considered time below consideration and would argue with him for days if allowed to.

“That an elf of your breeding would find himself so debased in life as to be forced to pet and flatter his inferiors and fellows into the purchase of orcish leavings such as this is intolerable,” Erlar and Phina’s father told him, for all the world as though he hadn’t spoken. “How shameless must he be, and with what great measure of contempt does this orc of the Bureau’s keeping look upon the natural and _immutable_ hierarchy of race within Faerûn that he would demand his better toil in his absence while he no doubt whores his way through the stable of impressionable fools here? In what world can it be that-”

“Seriously? I’m gonna throw up in my mouth if you don’t shut the fuck up, my guy,” Taako interrupted in Common. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

It’d been a long time since someone had been stupid enough to fly these particular colours in front of him, given that most people recognized him as an actual alien, but it hadn’t been long enough.

That earned him a pitying click of the tongue. “I see. You, like so many others, have been corrupted by this delusional mantra of equality that has infected the intellect of Faerûn. It is not incurable,” he was told, still in Elvish, “though it seems as much common sense to you now as the colour of the sky. You know, in every fibre of your being, that I am right-”

“You wanna go ahead and get fucking lost, my guy? Who even _are_ you to be spouting this?” Taako demanded. “Who thought it would be a good idea to invite you, ‘cause we gotta talk. _Cree_ -zus, isn’t this just the fucking garnish-”

“I am Elapetor Virquinal of the Fen,” Virquinal told him calmly. “My children are the heirs to the esteemed Whitthower family of Neverwinter. And you?”

Taako just stared at his extended hand for a moment before grabbing it and hauling him bodily against the front of the stall.

“I’ve got a question, shithead,” he snarled, pulling his hat off, “and here it is: does cha boy look like someone who gives a _fuck_ who you are?”

He saw it happen: he saw the exact moment Virquinal recognized him.

“I may be but a simple idiot wizard, but maybe you’ve heard of me,” Taako seethed through a furious smile, leaning in close. “I’m Taako. You know, from TV? You might also know me from my other works, like _defeating the Hunger_ -” He was actively screaming at this point. People were starting to stare. Virquinal tried to pull away. Taako dug his nails hard into the back of his hand. “Hey! Hey, what’s up? Not feeling it? I’m not _done_ , my man. You think I saved the universe for _this?”_

“I meant no offense-” Virquinal started to say. Taako resisted the urge to turn him into something nasty.

“ _Didn’t you?_ Could’ve fucking fooled me,” he snapped and then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. All around them, people were murmuring. He wondered if anyone had gone looking for someone to intervene yet. “Look, bucko, here’s how this is going to go,” he hissed in Elvish. “You’re right about one thing: Taako’s fucking sick of standing here. I’m tired and hungry and I haven’t taken a shit today. So you’re going to do me a solid: when I see Brad later, I’m gonna be able to tell him we sold out, because you’re going to buy _every fucking bottle_ I have left. See, cha boy fucked up this morning, and I don’t know how that’s gonna pan out for me tonight, which is a concern because not only am I bunking with Brad, I’m also _fucking_ him,” he whispered conspiratorially, grinning at the dawning horror on Virquinal’s face. “So I want him to feel good about how today went, you feel me? I want him to feel like, despite the fuckup, today turned out, and I think you’re the one who’s gonna make that happen for me. You picking up what I’m putting down?”

“This is absolutely ridi-” Virquinal started protesting. He stopped when Taako started turning his arm to stone.

“Glad to have you on board, my guy,” he said cheerfully, narrowing his eyes. “So here’s what’s about to happen: you’re going to clean me out. Every last drop. And then you’re going to leave,” he whispered, “and if I _ever_ see you again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Virquinal was just staring at him silently, golden face ashy with fear. Taako could tell he was trying to decide if he was bluffing.

Taako leaned in until their noses touched. “Let’s be real: what’re they gonna do?” he murmured. “Arrest me? I’m _Taako_.”

Slowly and with a shaking hand, Virquinal pushed his hefty coin purse across the counter.

Taako finally let go of his hand. He just stood there for a moment, looking lost.

“This better be enough. You know, the longer I have to look at you, the more tempted I am to just… go ahead and kill you now,” Taako told him conversationally, starting to count the contents of the purse. He took off running.

A weird pall of silence had fallen over the market.

Taako looked around at the stunned bystanders.

“Uh. So who’s up for free beer?” he asked, shrugging.

***

He was pleased to discover that the money was, in fact, more than enough to cover the rest of the inventory.

He was even more pleased to finally be able to relieve himself, eat something, and chug what felt like half his weight in water.

It was past seven and only slightly less sweltering than it had been earlier by the time he felt sufficiently recovered to make his way back to the cabin. As an afterthought, he stopped by the mess tent on the way to pick up something for Brad.

When he opened the door, Brad was absolutely frantic.

“I’m so sorry, Taako,” Brad said immediately, flinching when he took stock of how dead tired he must have looked. “I’m sure you tried to wake me up, but I’m just- I’m such a heavy sleeper during the day, and-”

“Bradson, chill,” Taako told him, shoving the plate of food into his hands. “Got something for you. You eaten yet, my man?”

“Uh- thank you. No, I haven’t,” Brad answered, staring at the plate for a second before putting it down on the dresser. “I know you were probably busy with other things today, but I really was hoping you’d come by the cabin at some point so I could open the stall-”

Taako sat down heavily on the bottom bunk. “The stall was open. Where exactly did you think I was all day?” he asked, a little insulted.

Brad looked very surprised, which was even more insulting. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Taako squinted at him and then flopped onto his back, nearly hitting his head against the wall. “Cha boy got shit going when he thought you’d still be by to take over- what the fuck was I suppose to do when I realized you weren’t? Just close?”

He felt the bed shift as Brad sat down on the mattress beside him. “You could have. I wouldn’t have blamed you,” he said. “I didn’t invite you here to work, Taako.” He was quiet. “Thank you. It means a lot to me that you’d go to all that trouble.” His fingers were warm on Taako’s cheek.

Taako leaned into them. “I fucked up and forgot to wake you up,” he mumbled. “Would’ve been a pretty shit move to bail on your pet project, too, right?”

Brad laughed. “It wasn’t your job to make sure I woke up on time,” he pointed out. His fingers traveled into Taako’s hair. “Besides, there’s always tomorrow.”

Taako opened an eye to peer at him. “Yeah, about that- not so much, actually.”

He could almost hear the inquisitive quality to Brad’s silence.

“You’re gonna have kind of a time running a stall with nothing to sell,” he yawned, worming his way across the bed until he could put his head in Brad’s lap. “Sorry.”

Brad paused in the middle of stroking his hair. “What happened? Did someone break into the storage last night?” His voice took on a more concerned weight. “Were you robbed? It shouldn’t be possible, but-”

Taako snorted. “No, my dude, it sold. Cha boy sold it all.”

“Really?” Brad asked, sounding mildly surprised, and then went, “wait, really?” with all the shock of someone whose brain had just caught up with what was being said. “All of it? You sold all of it? Taako, that’s _incredible_.”

“Yeah,” Taako confirmed, snuggling in, “you remember those shitty kids from yesterday? Half-elves, bought half a dozen reds? Well, turns out daddy was such a _big_ fan he just had to take everything we had left. What was I gonna do, tell him not to?”

Brad was still and quiet for long enough that he started to worry he’d picked up that something wasn’t quite right about his story.

“Wow,” he said finally, idly threading his fingers through Taako’s hair again. “These people really do live in their own world, don’t they?” he mused. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have the kind of money where I could just… do that.”

Taako had a sudden realization: if he’d wanted to, he could’ve just bought out the entire inventory of the stall himself at any time.

He was so used to being poor that he constantly found himself forgetting how immensely wealthy he’d become after founding his school. He’d spent the whole weekend thinking of the Bureau’s donors as a sea of fat-pursed marks when he was probably the richest single person in the entire campground.

He felt like an idiot.

“Yeah,” he agreed, pressing his forehead into Brad’s stomach, “it’s, uh, pretty fucking wild, huh?”

Brad hummed in agreement and continued stroking his hair, resting his other hand on his shoulder. They were both quiet for long enough that Taako started considering meditating.

“Thank you,” Brad murmured again. “You didn’t have to, but I really do appreciate it. I never expected you to take it so seriously. I thought-” he started, and then fell silent.

Taako frowned and rolled onto his back to look up at him. “You thought… what?” he asked. “You thought I’d just, like, fuck around and do whatever while you worked all weekend?”

Brad grimaced in that very particular way that he recognized as meaning he felt bad for having made that assumption but couldn’t pretend he hadn’t. “You’ve just… I guess I’ve just only ever seen you do what you want to do.”

Taako felt like he’d been sucker-punched.

He almost started arguing. He wanted to start a fight about it or laugh it off and change the subject.

He crossed his arms over his chest and forced himself to stop clenching his jaw. “Well, yeah,” he admitted. “That’s fair, I guess.”

Brad seemed taken aback. “…Taako?”

He could feel the mood getting heavy. He hated it. He didn’t want to do this. He’d told himself they’d have this conversation when it felt like it wasn’t going to make the mood weird, but he’d sort of been banking on the likelihood that the mood would never get weird enough to justify bringing it up. He’d considered just biting the bullet and bringing it up the night before, but then things had gone in a whole different direction.

“I’m trying to, like,” he started, and then scowled and covered his eyes with an arm, “not? Not do that? Be less… that?”

“Less what?” Brad was still running his fingers through his hair.

“Less shitty to people, I guess,” he muttered. “After Lup disappeared and Lucretia fucked up my memory, I just sort of… started doing whatever I wanted all the time. Once life stopped being about me and Lup surviving or studying to get a place on the Starblaster or us finding the Light, everything just felt sort of pointless, you know?” Talking about it was making him feel jumpy, like someone might sneak up on him while he was distracted. “And when I got my memories back, it was great: I got my sister back and everything made sense again and- I always kind of thought, y’know, ‘once we beat the Hunger, that’s it.’ That was supposed to be it. That was supposed to be the big closer, the happy ending to Taako’s story.”

Brad was silent. At some point, his hand had gone still.

“But then life just kept happening. Nothing actually _changed_ ,” he admitted. “I don’t feel any different than I did before, except now everything feels pointless even though I _know_ nothing is missing. I always thought maybe I was acting that way because Lup was gone and I was, I dunno, trying to fill that void? But now I know there’s just something fucking _wrong_ with me.” He wanted to run. The silence was eating at him. “Things should matter and they just fucking _don’t_.”

“Taako,” Brad said, finally, closing the gaping void of nothing that followed this confession, “have you talked to anyone about this? Do you talk to Kravitz about this?”

Taako scowled at him. “What? No.” Kravitz had tried. He still tried, sometimes. “What would be the point?”

Brad slowly stroked his hair. “Oh, Taako,” he said again. “Is it alright if I give you my thoughts on this, or would you prefer I just listen?”

“Go for it,” he mumbled.

“I was on the base when the Hunger attacked Faerûn,” Brad said quietly, “and when people started being attacked by things none of us could see, a lot of us barricaded ourselves in the offices on the lower levels. I remember looking out the window and realizing that it wasn’t just the base that was being attacked, that it was _everything_. I thought the world was ending.”

Taako raised his arm to look at him.

Brad was looking down with a soft frown. “Before then, I’d have a person come to me looking for mental health leave or trauma reassignment maybe once every three months unless something big happened, like Phandalin,” he said. “For about a year after, that was _all_ I did. People started having breakdowns in the middle of missions. We were trying to put the world back together while we were still falling apart.”

“Okay,” Taako muttered.

Brad stroked his cheek with his knuckles. “I was one of the only people on the base who wasn’t,” Brad told him, “and there’s only ever one reason a person is able to go about their business as usual without any help after something like that happens: because they’ve already lived through something terrible.” His dark eyes were distant. “Death isn’t something unexpected or unfamiliar to me.”

Taako looked at him.

“My point is that living through terrible things can make you very good at living through other terrible things,” Brad said, “and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Living through something doesn’t mean you’ve actually survived it. Every time something like that happens to you, it takes a piece of you. If you don’t realize that and rebuild that part of you, you never really move past it.” Brad’s fingers were warm. “The reason trauma makes you good at enduring more trauma is because, eventually, you get used to having pieces of who you are stripped away.”

Taako knew he was staring. “What’re you saying, Bradson?”

He looked so sad Taako could barely stand to look at him. “I’m saying I don’t think you’ve rebuilt anything you’ve lost, Taako,” he murmured. “You’ve been through so much, and I think you’ve let it strip so much out of you that you’ve made enduring trauma part of who you _are_. Everything feels pointless to you because the only thing that makes you feel like you’re achieving anything is _danger_.” He stroked a thumb down his jaw. “Or stress. Pain. You’d know better than I would which one it is for you. Regardless, it doesn’t make you happy, but it’s better than the alternative, because then-”

“Everything feels empty,” he whispered. Admitting it meant being acutely aware of the raw edges of the hole inside him.

A hole shaped just like him.

Brad stroked his cheek again. “You’re probably depressed, at the very least. It’d be surprising if you weren’t, after everything you’ve been through,” he said softly. “But it’s not going to get any better unless you do something to change that.”

“It’s not an excuse,” Taako muttered.

Brad looked startled. “What?”

“It’s not an excuse,” he said again. “I can’t just act like shit and then expect it to get written off because I’m fucked up. Lucretia’s fucked up and that doesn’t make what she did the rest of us okay. Merle’s fucked up and that doesn’t make him abandoning his fucking wife and kids okay. Davenport’s fucked up and that doesn’t make him being willing to abandon this world to the Hunger okay,” he muttered. “And me being fucked up doesn’t make the way I treat you okay. It’s not fucking _okay_ , Brad.”

Brad just sort of sat there, stroking his cheek. “I… don’t really know what to say to that, Taako,” he said, smiling awkwardly.

“Don’t put up with it,” Taako told him, rolling onto his side again and wrapping his arms around Brad’s waist. “Don’t just go along with the shit I do because you think I’m gonna, I dunno, get pissed off or dump you if you put your foot down. I won’t. I’m actually not that good at walking out on shit. Just fucking tell me off if I make do something you’re not down with.”

Brad gave him an embarrassingly fond look. “Alright,” he said. “I can do that. Um, here we go: please stop wallowing in your problems and get actual help for them. I can forward you some resources, you know. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Taako wrinkled his nose at him. “That wasn’t really what I meant when I said ‘put your foot down’,” he complained. “I meant more like… don’t let cha boy push you into some crazy shit you’re not into, like choking or fucking knifeplay or something.”

Brad smiled down at him. “Oh, I understood what you meant,” he teased. “I just thought I might as well capitalize on the opportunity.”

“Kicking me when I’m down, huh, Stamps?” he accused, and Brad laughed.

“Are you going to leave me over it?” Brad asked him a knowing smile.

Taako scowled at him and sat up. “Maybe I am,” he threatened, and Brad laughed again. “Maybe this it, homie, now I’m gonna up and ditch your green ass once and for all,” he said, jabbing his finger into Brad’s chest.

Brad smiled and Brad kissed him.

***

It was a lazy evening. Once the sun had gone down, he tagged along with Brad to the showers and washed the day’s grime off of himself before changing into something clean. They hung out together in the mess tent and ate leisurely.

Taako hassled Brad for flirting with the woman at the counter and Brad laughed at him for it.

It was nice.

A tension he hadn’t even realized was there had vanished: some lingering fear that, eventually, Brad would realize just how fucked up he was and reach his breaking point. The sick part of him missed it the same way it missed the days when he’d invite Kravitz on dates not knowing if they’d end with Kravitz trying to kill him.

There was something comfortable about it. Something sweet.

Something strange started to happen.

Before when Brad would smile at him in a certain way or say certain things, he’d roll his eyes and call him a sap for it, too knotted up in his paranoid conviction that this was all going to go to hell sooner or later to let himself absorb the affection he was being given.

Now that he wasn’t, he realized something: without that defense mechanism, he had absolutely no idea how to handle it. Kravitz was effusive and doting when it came to expressing his adoration, but he was not _flirtatious_. He was too no-nonsense a person to sit around smiling secretively when he could just say he loved him.

So when he looked up from his dinner to find Brad just looking at him in that way, a little smile playing on his lips and a warm look in his eye, his face immediately went hot.

Brad seemed to find this development delightful.

***

“Are you just not going to look at me ever again?” Brad teased.

“You lost that privilege when you started being ridiculous, my man,” Taako told him, almost letting the door close on him as he kicked off his boots in the entryway to the cabin and started stripping off his clothes.

“I don’t think it’s ridiculous to tell you I think you’re gorgeous,” Brad pointed out. Taako could hear him smiling.

“Ugh. _Eugh_. Why are you like this?” he complained. Brad laughed.

He felt it when Brad kissed his shoulder. “Well, why are you so beautiful?” he countered, and Taako covered his face in his hands. “Oh, we’re back to this, are we?”

“Don’t fucking look at me,” he muttered.

Brad just laughed at him again. “Impossible,” he said cheerfully, gently peeling his hands away from his face. “Especially not when you’re being this cute.”

Taako glowered at him. “Last time you pulled this shit it almost made me completely rethink fucking you,” he said darkly. “Did you think I was cute then, too, my man?”

“Incredibly,” Brad said immediately, grinning. “I always thought you of as someone who was proud of how shameless he was. I can’t tell you how surprised I was the first time I saw you go purple like that,” he mused. “Until that happened, I actually didn’t know elves could blush.”

Taako leveled a look at him, trying to will the heat out of his face. “Glad it was a learning experience for you, Bradson,” he muttered.

Brad kissed him. It was a slow kiss, a sweet kiss, and it only left his face burning more intensely.

Taako scowled. “Sometimes I feel like you think this is a contest,” he complained once there was space to talk, “and I’m the one who’s _losing_.”

Brad smiled and kissed him again. “I don’t know if you’re losing, but I’m pretty sure I’m winning,” he joked, squatting down in front of him so he was looking up. “How could I not be? Look at you.”

“Ugh, you _fucker_ ,” Taako swore, putting a hand on Brad’s face and shoving him away before flouncing over and throwing himself belly-first on the bottom bunk. “Good luck making the top bunk work for you, homie, sweet dreams-”

 He felt Brad’s breath on his back as he chuckled, shivering at the sensation of a kiss to the back of his neck. “If you’re that tired, I’ll leave you alone,” Brad offered. “I’m probably going to be awake for a while, though.”

Taako peered over his shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow.

Brad kissed the corner of his jaw affectionately. “I’m nocturnal, Taako,” he laughed. “I can stay awake all day, but my internal clock will always reset. Even after how long yesterday was, I still couldn’t sleep until just before dawn last night, and I didn’t wake up until well after noon today. I probably won’t be able to sleep until dawn tomorrow. My body has its own schedule. There’s not a lot I can do to fight that. Mostly I just grin and bear it when I have to.”

Taako rolled over and looked at him curiously. “Huh.” He considered it. “I guess I don’t really get that,” he admitted. “I mean, I think maybe wood elves are like that too because they’ve got the whole connection to the forest and shit? And I don’t know about sun elves, but fuck them anyway,” he added, sneering when he thought about Virquinal. “But for me it’s like… it doesn’t matter when I meditate as long as I _do_ , you feel? As long as cha boy gets his hours in, he’s good to go. But that might just be Taako.”

Brad hummed. “That’s hard for me to imagine,” he said, “but if you’re asking me to let you do that, that’s fine. I should probably make an appearance around the camp today, anyway.”

Taako rolled back onto his stomach and squirmed under the sheet, giving Brad a thumbs-up. “Check in on cha boy in four,” he said, and then settled in to meditate.

Brad laughed again and kissed his exposed shoulder. “It’s a date.”

***

Taako roused feeling boneless and rested, but to an empty cabin. His innate sense of time told him it was around two in the morning: more or less exactly four hours after he’d started meditating.

He lounged around in bed for a while, hoping Brad would show up.

After another half hour, he resigned himself to that not being the case.

“‘ _It’s a date_ ’,” he parroted mockingly, dressing with a sort of irritated clumsiness, “A date my _ass_ , Bradson.”

As he left the cabin, he was surprised to find that the camp was still more or less bustling. It was the last night before everyone was leaving, he supposed. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a unique thought to party late on the Sunday and sleep through the Sunday.

The scene was a lot more reminiscent of the Camp Goodfriend he remembered, just on a larger scale and with generally nicer clothes: people sitting around the campfire or on the grass with cups in their hands; couples and groups giggling and talking close until one snuck off to privacy, then another, as though not leaving together would deceive onlookers; a young woman vomiting into a bucket as one friend rubbed her back comfortingly and another offered her a draught out of her waterskin.

The night was full of stars and laughter. He felt somehow more alone than he had when he’d actually been alone.

He wove through clumps of people, ignoring friendly hails from drink-emboldened strangers who may or may not have recognized him.

Brad shouldn’t have been difficult to find. Aside from the occasional goliath, he was amongst the tallest people in the camp, standing head and shoulders over most.

And, as Taako started to realize, he seemed to be the only full-blooded orc in the camp at all.

Here and there he saw the telltale signs of half-orcs: skin too rich with bronze or copper or gold to support the greyish undertones of that characteristic green or orange or red, protruding teeth that could almost be the symptom of an underbite rather than a distinct racial feature, and tall, solid frames that were never quite impenetrable or imposing enough to not give away the difference.

For how few of them were around, they were very popular, he noticed with some amusement. What lingering anti-orc sentiment was left in the world seemed to be gradually fading, if the curiosity and fearlessness of the rich could be trusted to indicate such a thing.

Ah, he thought. There he was.

Caught in the midst of maybe the biggest cluster of all was a familiar face with familiar horn-rimmed glasses and a familiar grey-streaked ponytail.

Taako just stopped and watched him for a moment, disbelieving.

In moments like this, seeing him surrounded by attentive strangers of all makes and ages, it was unimaginable that he’d ever somehow forgotten that Brad was a bard.

There was no way he was sinking so low as to have to squeeze through those people to get at him.

“Hey nerd,” he called instead, and more than a few heads turned. One, he was gratified to see, was Brad’s.

“Taako,” he said, seeming surprised, and started to say something else when the people around him erupted into chatter.

“Taako?” one close to him said, turning to peer at him. “Wait, are you _Taako?”_

“The same, my man,” he confirmed, “any chance of me stealing Mister Congeniality over there?” he asked, or tried to ask, because while a lot of people seemed to be suddenly talking, not very many of them were also listening.

“You’re _Taako_? Oh my god, I’ve always wanted to ask you-”

“-buddy Merle owes me twenty gold pieces-”

“So he really _was_ here? I thought Merylina was-”

“-means that Magnus Burnsides is-?”

“Is that really Taako? I heard he’s dating the-”

Over their heads, he could see Brad grimacing apologetically.

***

“I’m sorry, Taako, I got caught up in conversation,” Brad was apologizing as they finally made their way back inside the cabin.

Taako had been outside for maybe an hour and a half and he already felt tired again. The difference between engaging a crowd from a stage versus from within was a hell of a thing.

“I get it,” he said shortly. “Cree- _zus_ , you got a couple fans, huh, Stamps?”

Brad laughed. “Not as many as you,” he pointed out.

Taako gave him a withering stare. “I’m Taako, y’know, from-”

“TV?” Brad finished, smiling. “Don’t make me compete with you,” he joked. “We both know that’s not a battle I can win.”

Taako rolled his eyes and snaked his arms up around Brad’s neck once he’d finished locking the door. “Cha boy was out there building his brand before you were even born,” he said dismissively. “So, _uhh_ : what battle, Bradson?”

Brad laughed again and kissed him. “So you’re admitting you had the advantage of a head start?” he asked breezily.

Taako could feel his eyebrows creeping up. “You know, Bradson,” he mused, “cha boy can’t decide if he just didn’t know to look for _this_ ,” he said, gesturing non-specifically to the entirety of Brad, “or if you’re just letting it all hang out now that you think you can get away with it. Hmm?”

Brad looked genuinely puzzled. “Pardon?”

“What was it you told me?” Taako hummed, tapping his finger against his lips in an overt display of pretended forgetfulness. “You said you were _‘uselessly competitive’_ , was that right, my man?”

Brad looked like he’d been slapped. Not slapped particularly hard, it should be noted, but at least knocked upside the head with enough force to give him pause.

He opened his mouth.

He closed his mouth.

“Hey-” he started to protest, and then clammed up.

Taako laughed at him. He couldn’t help it. He also did not try to help it, if he was being honest. “What, were you just telling me to be cute?” he said. “Did you think cha boy was just gonna conveniently forget? Oh _no_ , Brad. You give Taako something like that? He keeps it.” He leaned in, grinning. “Thank you for this gift, I’ll _treasure_ it,” he teased.

Brad looked like he had a lot of regrets, but he still couldn’t seem to put together what it was he wanted to say.

“You alright there, _uhh_ -” Taako stopped and affected a little moue of embarrassment. “Sorry, what was your name again? Was it Brent? It was Brent, right-”

Brad closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “You know what, Taako? I can admit when I’ve made a mistake,” he sighed, and Taako laughed at him again.

“No take-backs, homie,” he sing-songed, delighted. “You think you can confess to fucking _doing_ me like that with the whole-” he waved vaguely with a hand and managed to communicate absolutely nothing. “- _‘oh, I just wanted to make sure there were no misunderstandings but really I just wanted to satisfy this deep-seated need I have to be noticed even though I don’t really do anything to make myself interesting to people’_ shtick and expect-”

“Woah, _hey_ -” Brad interrupted again. Taako felt his hands tighten convulsively around his waist and leveled a stare at him, quirking an eyebrow.

“Oh, sorry,” he started, pursing his lips, “I must be mixing you up with the _other_ orc named Brad Bradson who works in HR on the moon,” he said cynically, “see, this other Brad, he likes to collect stamps. And he has this whole thing where he’s really into how mail works? Like that’s kind of his _thing_. That’s what he’s known for. That’s a thing he once really, actually expected _me_ , Taako, famous wizard and celebrity chef, to give a shit about when we ran into each other at a Candlenights party. Isn’t that _wild?”_

Brad was giving him kind of an awkward, slightly uncomfortable half-smile. “I understand that you don’t share my hobbies, Taako, but that’s a bit-”

Taako patted him on the cheek and then realized he was, on the whole, probably coming across as much more condescending than was ideal for him if his endgame wasn’t getting his dumb ass dumped before sunrise. “Brad,” he started again, trying not to sound insincere, “I’m not fucking with you when I say I really do think it’s cute as hell how excited you get about the shit you’re into.”

The smile was getting dangerously thin and strained, but he wasn’t being pushed away. “But?” Brad prompted. His voice was oddly neutral, like he wasn’t all that interested in the conversation.

Taako snuggled closer, knowing he was cute, hoping he was cute enough prevent himself from getting into even deeper hot water with Brad. “But,” he continued, leaning in and looking up through his eyelashes in the most endearing way he could muster, “it’s not really a solid opener, like- I mean, it’s kind of a- you see, my man, the thing is, it’s just-”

Brad was just watching him. That weird neutrality had spread to the rest of his expression. The smile had vanished. He said nothing.

Taako tried desperately to conjure up a way to say what he wanted to without sounding insulting and very quickly came to the terrible realization that, if there was one, it required a social skillset he simply did not possess.

He opened his mouth for a few moments, saying nothing, and then sighed noisily. “Look, Brad,” he said, resigned to shooting straight and suffering the consequences, “you _can’t_.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth to prevent Brad from interrupting him again. “You can- _fucking_ -not fault me for blanking on you when your whole brand is just like… _‘look how normal I am’_ ,” he said, modulating his voice not into an intentional imitation, but into a calm, wholly unremarkable cadence that actually came a lot closer to emulating Brad’s way of speaking than he’d intended it to. “You’ve got this whole ‘just a friendly co-worker’ character you play, “he rambled defensively, “and it makes you fucking _impossible_ to remember, no lie-”

The veneer of neutrality cracked. “Excuse me?” He actually looked a little hurt.

“I don’t know if it’s an orc thing-” Taako said, and then grimaced at himself. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s a thing you do to try and fit in,” he clarified hastily, “but if it is, it _works_.” He wound his arms tighter around Brad’s neck, determined to power through. “You blend in real good, so if that’s what you were going for, hey: congrats, my guy, you did it! You did the damn thing. But it doesn’t make you _interesting_ ,” he said frankly. “You can’t make your image all about what a chill, normal dude you are and then expect people who don’t have to get to know you better to want to. That’s not how people _work._ The first thing they see? That’s who you are to them. Unless you’ve got a real good reason to make people want to know more about you, a first impression is all you’re ever gonna get,” he explained. “People are _lazy_. Taako’s lazy, too. I’m not going to lie to you, Bradson: if we hadn’t fucked that morning, nothing would’ve changed. Making me hate my life wasn’t gonna make me remember your name or anything else about you.” He shrugged, trying to read Brad’s expression. “You just would’ve gone from ‘that guy who likes stamps’ to ‘that guy who’s why we do Candlenights at home now’,” he admitted. “Fuck, it probably sounds a little heartless of cha boy to say it, but when we fucked, _that_ was what gave me a reason to give a shit. And now I do, I guess. So yeah. Mission accomplished?” He tried to sound encouraging. His words mostly came out sounding nervous and confused.

Brad’s face had softened, but he looked a little glum. “I’ll admit, Taako, this… isn’t really how I pictured my night going,” he joked weakly.

Taako wheezed. It was a sound that tried to be a laugh but didn’t quite pass muster. “You and me both, Stamps,” he muttered, pushing up onto his toes in the hopes that Brad would meet his kiss. To his relief, he did.

He did, but he also held him with a strange sort of gingerness, like he’d suddenly realized he had poisonous spines that could come out at any moment.

Taako sighed into the kiss. “Sorry,” he mumbled against Brad’s lips. His stomach roiled as he registered what it was he’d done to the atmosphere.  

Brad gave him a little squeeze before letting go, but didn’t answer. Taako watched him as he puttered quietly around the cabin, collecting their things in preparation for leaving the following evening. Most of the carnage on the floor was Taako’s doing.

“I can just,” Taako said finally, fidgeting with his hair, “go, if you want? Taako can ditch.”

Brad slowed and shot him an inquisitive glance.

“I can-” Taako said again, and then just sort of jerked his thumb in the general direction of the door instead of finishing. He stepped back almost unconsciously.

Brad paused completely and looked at him. “If you want to leave, I won’t stop you,” he said carefully.

Something sharp lodged deep in Taako’s chest twinged painfully. “Oh,” he mumbled. “Yeah, okay. Uh.”

He’d snagged his boots from the doorway and was about to beat a hasty retreat when a massive hand pushed the door shut before he could get it open more than a crack. He couldn’t prevent the startled squeak that escaped him as the doorknob yanked out of his hand.

Brad was giving him a look that seemed like it was trying very hard not to communicate open and obvious exasperation.

“Uh, what happened to-?” Taako started to demand.

“I changed my mind,” Brad said flatly.

Taako turned around to stare at him.

“I can’t help but feel like if I let you run away to go feel sorry for yourself somewhere, there’s a chance I’m just never going to see you again,” Brad told him, frowning. “I feel like you’ll either convince yourself that I don’t want to see you or come up with some other reason why you suddenly have to avoid me. I’m sorry if that’s not true,” he said, “or if you find it insulting, but I’d rather have you be angry at me than risk having you disappear.”

Taako crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged, staring into Brad’s navel. It actually wasn’t unheard of for him to go ghost when the going got tough, so while he didn’t particularly like the accusation, he also couldn’t pretend it was impossible.

Brad sighed. “Well, I had to give you the ammo you used against me, so I think I might still be winning this round,” he commented casually.

Taako glowered. “Oh, sure. Real cute,” he muttered.

Brad squatted down in front of him, so Taako stared over his head instead. Brad sighed again. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to defuse this, Taako. I’m usually very good at that,” he said. “De-escalation is one of my specialties.”

“It’s not your fault,” Taako snapped.

“Okay. So?”

Taako leveled a stare at him before looking away again. “It’s not your fault,” he repeated, “so why the _fuck_ would it be your problem to fix, Bradson? Leave me alone. Cha boy’ll fucking deal.”

“I’m sure you will,” Brad acknowledged. “Taako, it doesn’t have to be my fault or my problem for me to want to do something to solve it. I can’t say I _enjoyed_ being talked to like that, especially since I feel like it’s very easy to tell when you’re saying something you believe to be true, which does make me question if I was being presumptuous thinking you liked me at all, given how unflattering your opinion of me seems to be,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I like _you_. I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to be a bit taken aback to hear that the way you see me isn’t at all what I thought it was. I think it’s pretty normal to want to believe a person you care about and admire thinks you’re better than you really are.”

Taako stared at the bunkbeds, feeling weirdly empty. “Yeah. I guess I get that,” he mumbled.

Brad reached cautiously out to touch him, watching him closely. “It’s something I need to process and adjust to,” he said, stroking a thumb down his arm. “I was caught off-guard.”

Taako tightened his arms over his chest, still staring at the bunkbeds. “It’s not like that,” he protested quietly. Brad hummed inquisitively. His hand was warm on Taako’s arm as he stood there, trying to gather the frayed edges of a thought that had never occurred to him with any sort of coherence. “Krav is into rules. I mean, he’s into them to a fucking stupid degree, and he almost killed me over it,” he said, “and you’re the fucking pettiest person I have ever met in my life, no joke. And you know what?” he asked, looking at the top of Brad’s head. “I _like_ that. It makes it easier. You try spending a hundred years with the same six people and you’ll get where I’m coming from, homie. You get into everybody’s dirty laundry, whether you want to or not. It’s like having roommates except half the time you’re stuck on an empty planet and they’re all you get if you want company,” he said. “After a while, the shine wears off so much it kind of comes back again. You go full circle on people. You just get used to the idea that somebody you love can be thoughtless or selfish or just plain fucking _stupid_.” He thought about Lucretia, about Davenport, about Magnus, about Merle. He thought about Lup and Barry falling in love and then falling farther, finding out there was something beyond merely being in love, finding a place of timeless and unknowable adoration for one another he envied but couldn’t even imagine. “But once you get there, it’s just… people put on their best faces for you and you’re like ‘yikes, what the fuck is this, bubbeleh? Who even _are_ you?’ You forget how to do that.” He frowned. “You forget how to just see the best in people. A guy who’s trying to destroy the fucking universe kills your friend over and over again and then he turns around and asks Mister Hunger there if they’re _friends_. That’s what it does to you. It makes you fucking crazy, but like, a special crazy that never goes away. It fucks you up.”

Brad was very quiet. Taako didn’t quite dare to look at him.

“Hm,” Brad said finally. “I’m not going to lie to you and pretend I understand how that feels, Taako,” he mused, “but I’m trying to understand. It’s hard to imagine.”

“I guess so, huh?” Taako asked. “Y’know, I think Magnus is the only one who got off clean. Lucky fuck’s too much of a dumbass to have ever done anything but take people at face value in the first place. You give him anything and he just takes it without asking any questions. Asshole,” he muttered fondly.

Brad chuckled softly and stroked his cheek. Taako finally looked at him.

He looked thoughtful and fond and a little like he’d resigned himself to settling in for a long night.

“Hey,” Taako said.

Brad smiled a little. “Hey.”

“We could stop talking about bullshit that doesn’t matter and just fuck,” Taako suggested. Brad snorted. It was the kind of snort that suggested he had been taken by surprise by the suggestion but wasn’t particularly surprised by its content.

“I don’t feel like that’s a very productive solution to this situation,” Brad pointed out, but didn’t resist or protest when Taako undid the tie in his hair and buried his hands in it.

“Oh, it _deffo_ isn’t,” Taako confirmed breezily. “So?”

“So?” Brad parroted, drawing him closer.

“So you down or what? Get with the program, cree- _zus_ ,” he complained, and Brad laughed and pulled him down for a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just spend a lot of time thinking about the psychological aftereffects of prolonged isolation with only half a dozen other people, okay
> 
> also I've revealed my true form: hi i'm nah and i have a tragic backstory (three hearts required to unlock)


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